Photo of Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert speaking.
Republican U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert has introduced a bill to block the Biden administration from rejoining the Paris climate agreement until it is confirmed by the Senate.
Boebert’s bill is co-sponsored by 11 Republican lawmakers. The bill prohibits Congress from appropriating funds to implement the Paris Climate Agreement until it is approved by the Senate. Former President Barack Obama used his presidential authority when he joined the Paris Agreement in 2016, thus bypassing the congressional process.
“My bill prohibits Congress from spending a single penny on the Paris Agreement until it is ratified by the U.S. Senate,” said Beauport in a press release Thursday. “Joe Biden took an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. If he wants to keep his oath, he must forward the job-killing Paris Agreement to the U.S. Senate for approval.”
While the bill has little chance of passing the Democratic-controlled House, the bill raises concerns, namely, whether the Paris Climate Agreement is an executive agreement or a treaty that constitutionally requires Senate advice and approval.
Citing the “climate crisis,” Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office to rejoin the Paris Agreement after former President Trump initiated the process to withdraw from the agreement in 2017.
“Unilateral accession to the Paris Agreement was wrong in 2016, and it is wrong now,” said Beauport. “Responsible energy production supports more than 230,000 Colorado jobs. The Paris Agreement puts those jobs at risk and will increase energy costs. $4 per gallon of gasoline, again!”
Ratifying a treaty requires winning two-thirds of the votes in the Senate, which Biden is unlikely to get in the 50-50 bipartisan Senate landscape.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday (Jan. 21) that Biden implemented multiple missteps on his first day in office, including rejoining the Paris Agreement.
“The president has rejoined the failed Paris Climate Agreement – a terrible agreement that will cause serious economic pain to American working families by ourselves, and there is no guarantee that China (Communist Party of China) or Russia will honor their commitments. In fact, the U.S. is already reducing its carbon emissions while China and other countries that signed the agreement are increasing them. Rejoining will only allow us to kill American jobs while our competitors continue to whiz by.” McConnell said.
One of the reasons the Trump Administration chose to withdraw from the Paris Agreement was that the agreement’s differential treatment of countries’ emissions reduction requirements would cause the U.S. to lose competitiveness.
The differential treatment is because the U.S., also a participant in the climate agreement, has to work to reduce emissions, while China and India can continue to increase emissions. With such a non-binding approach, Trump feels he sees no prospect of the U.S. paying a huge price for the deal.
Trump said in 2017 that China could increase its carbon emissions for another 13 years under the agreement, and they are not bound to reduce emissions for those 13 years, while the U.S. is not. The Paris agreement is unfair, especially to the United States.
Nicolas Loris, deputy director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, argued that while the agreement was “well-intentioned “from the outset, it was economically and environmentally flawed.
In 2016, Loris and other experts authored a Heritage Foundation report titled “Consequences of Paris Protocol: Devastating Economic Costs, Essentially Zero Environmental Benefits). The report examines the economic impact the U.S. would face if it became part of the Paris Agreement, as well as its impact on reducing global carbon emissions.
“Because the Paris Climate Agreement has no real power and developing countries are given a free pass on emissions,” Loris said, “the Paris Agreement is likely to fall short of its intended goals.”
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